Hi there!

My name is Mariëlle, and I was born at the very beginning of the summer of ’86, three hours and six whole minutes before the moon was fully full. I’m an INFJ, currently serve six cats, would kill for good vegan chocolate mousse, and live in a small medieval city in the middle of the Netherlands.

Officially, I’ve been coaching writers since 2016 (the other creatives came knocking later), which is when I added that offering to the services I already provided as a freelance editor. While I love books and understand exactly what makes them work, from the very start I attracted clients who needed less of a book coach and more of a life coach: it wasn’t the stories that were tripping them up, it were them and their patterns and limiting beliefs that were getting in the way.

In the course of a few months, I went from brainstorming storylines and filling up plot holes to diving deep into the what and why of the stories my clients were put on this earth to write. Asking the right questions to help them uncover what was holding them back and what they’d need to move beyond that obstacle quickly became a specialty of mine.

Unofficially, though, I’ve been coaching writers since 2010, which was the first time I taught a room full of university students. As I guided them through writing their papers, my first concern was always the why of their topic. Why did they pick this cultural artefact or historical event to write about? What was it that had struck them about it, and why? I taught them about structure, too, but that always came second.

It’s something I became known for amongst the student population, that I was that teacher who cared about why something mattered to them and urged them to explore what was driving them to write about it.

In hindsight, and this is how these things go, this is not a far cry at all from the coaching I’ve been doing since 2016.

At the time, I had zero intention to ever be anything but a ‘regular’ coach. I had my spirituality, which was rapidly developing, but that was a private matter, and I was determined to keep anything spiritual as far away from my professional work as I could.

The Universe had different plans, as it does. As I became acquainted with the Akashic Records, learned to read oracle and tarot cards, and became a Tera Mai Reiki & Seichem Master, I kept being sent clients who ‘forced’ me to merge my professional background with my spiritual interests. Some hired me to edit or translate their holistic books while others came to me for coaching and were struggling in a way that needed a broader approach.

And then there were the many writers and other creatives I came across who suddenly had the audacity to openly bring their spirituality into their creative practice, something that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

I now know that I was being held back by my witch wound, which is the collective fear shared by many of what might happen if we come out of the spiritual closet. I wasn’t even fully in that closet anymore – I sometimes pulled cards for clients I truly trusted or sent them Reiki, and I’d even published some books on cartomancy in the meantime – but it wasn’t something I enthusiastically (if at all) mentioned on my editing and coaching website. I even had separate social media accounts for these things.

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that the Universe, to put it mildly, got tired of my desperate attempts to not bridge my spiritual and my coaching work. During two distant Reiki treatments, for two different friends, I dropped into their Akashic Records and promptly freaked out. The second time worse than the first.

For one, you need consent to read someone’s Records. My friends had consented to receiving Reiki, but that was it. Secondly, I hadn’t used the portal prayer I still use when entering the Records, so I felt unprotected and unsafe. And then there was the fact that I hadn’t been taught how to read other people’s Records; I only ever read my own.

I reached out to Josephine Hardman, my go-to source for everything Akashic. She was a Reiki practitioner too, and I was hoping she’d be able to shed some light on this disturbing turn of events.

The moment she went into my Records, she was told I needed to stop resisting the work I’d come here to do, which was using the Akashic Records to help others. It’s why my Record Keepers had started dropping me into people’s Records. Apparenty, I hadn’t been listening to any of the signs they’d been sending me, and they were getter rather desperate.

They proceeded to tell Josephine to give me whatever material I needed from her training programming to open other people’s Records and urged me to stop being afraid and start experimenting.

The experimenting part I had no problem with. I immediately started testing what I could and couldn’t do within my own Records. But ye olde witch wound kept me afraid of moving this work into the public sphere for a long time to come. It took me 1.5 years to read a client’s Records, and I only did so because I’d known this client for a long time and knew they weren’t averse to spiritual practices.

After that first reading, I reluctantly started offering the same to other long-term clients. Once I began to receive their feedback, I knew there was no turning back. This was the work I came here to do.

Yes, Universe, I know you told me so.

In 2024, after a year of reading the Records of every creative I could get to volunteer, I stopped being a ‘regular’ coach and started coaching exclusively through the Records. My clients come to me with the same challenges, but now we approach them via the Akashic Records. It’s been a game changer, both for me and for them.

That same year, Josephine launched a new programme specifically aimed at coaches who wanted to incorporate the Records in their practice. Needless to say, I signed up immediately – sometimes, I do recognise a sign! – and, after seven months of intense training, became a certified Akashic Records Master Practitioner in March 2025.

I was already doing the work, but I can’t help but feel that now it’s truly beginning. And I can’t wait to meet all the beautiful souls I came to this earth to help on their path.

xx Mariëlle